Changes to chapter 104. Transfer Accepted (Patreon)

If you're seeing this post after Feb 19th, it's not relevant for you.

I realized a very, very crucial mistake on chapter 104. I forgot innate soul defense doesn't exist against B-ranks. That changes the battle completely.

It also comes with the advantage of letting us see what killed that Dream Body in the end, and I even made it much more interesting. In my country, we have a saying that goes like, "there are evils that come for good." This is one such case.

I also better explained the reason the Dreamer paid 1/10th the price of his B+ stat upgrade.

These are the relevant parts:

On AP:

The Pioneer Tutorial was a Special AP Area, and everyone who entered it  paid the reduced prices, Dreamer included. Unfortunately, only trainees  could gain AP through killing in Pioneer Tutorials, and those prices couldn't be abused by bringing extra AP from the outside.  The system prevented that by creating two distinct AP pools when anyone  entered it, the external and internal ones.

The battle:

(...)

The magic formation used by the drow flared to life, limiting the Dreamer's physical stats to B-. Even some A-ranks wouldn't be able to pay the cost to do that to such a giant being, yet the drow not only had the means but also were willing to pay for it. That's how much they hated the Dreamer.

The drow threw spell after spell against their foe. The Dreamer split their focus, and each tentacle got its own willpower and sent even more spells back. Mana saturated space, giving everything a slightly blue tint.

The willpower on each tentacle was individually weaker than each drow, but they had higher numbers. More importantly, the Dreamer was a hivemind, which allowed them to link different wills together to defend or attack.

The drow couldn't do that.

So the tentacles' won every clash of spells. The Path of Dreams turned incoming attacks into harmless dreams that couldn't exist in the real world. Every enemy spell got snuffed into oblivion while the Dreamer's spells hit true, also turning dozens of drow into dreams in an instant. They were killed without leaving even a body behind.

The Dreamer recalled the Human Rising Star guessing higher ranks should give extra soul protection against a B-rank, but it was the opposite. No soul could protect one against someone at B-rank or higher. It became a matter of sheer will against will, Path versus Path, and unless you could actively defend yourself, your soul would serve for nothing. That was why the drow could survive despite declaring war against some races with A-ranks. Numbers started mattering even more.

The Dreamer alone had higher numbers and the advantage of a hivemind.

The drow had brought a formation to decrease the Dreamer's stats, but it merely affected the Dreamer's physical prowess. It didn't affect their most important advantages. The Dreamer didn't regret one bit culling such a bunch of fools in their cradle. If anything, they wished they had done worse, so they would already be gone instead of wasting precious mana.

The flies released their domain to suppress the Path of Dreams and strengthen their spells. The Dreamer released theirs. A strong enough domain could ignore countless inferior ones, but the drow also had a few peak B-ranks, and their domains denied his. Reality cried as Path met Path, twisting absolute Laws under different wills that often pushed it in opposite directions.

The Dreamer's spells disappeared when they entered the three strong enemy domains, just like every drow spell disappeared when entering the Domain of Dreams.

Fortunately, the domains of the three peak B-ranks only covered a fifth of the battlefield—another advantage of having such a massive body. The weaker drow tried to escape to the domains, but the tentacles reaped at least a hundred lives before they were protected.

The two sides reached a stalemate. The parties would have to approach each other until their domains overlapped, and then the Dreamer would have the advantage again. Victory would be theirs.

Instead of approaching, the drow realized their inferiority and ran. They rushed toward their headquarters, the massive world that started twisting in space. They were preparing to teleport it away.

The Dreamer released a biological laugh. They had contemplated attacking the drow directly many times, but their dreams weren't strong enough to see the result of such a fight. There were too many B-ranks in their world all the time, and the Dreamer guessed the drow did so on purpose, precisely to prevent the Dreamer's dreams from seeing too much. The Dreamer could dream about any threat to their lives, even from B-ranks—which spoke of A-rank involvement in that sneak attack—but it was different when they tried to attack someone else.

That had made them wary of such a fight. However, it seemed the drow had hidden from the Dreamer out of fear. The drow suspected they might lose if they ever fought. It was evident the Dreamer had done too much of a good job in the drow Pioneer Tutorial, permanently crippling them.

It was now time to finish the job.

The Dreamer entered the dream world, phasing through time and space as if it wasn't there. In the physical world, it was as if they had teleported without using the Laws of Spacetime, an ability that also put him above many. When they appeared again, their body was already embracing the enormous world, occupying a third of its surface.

They realized too late that it was a trap designed over six hundred drow years ago and perfected ever since.

The massive magic formation in space flared to life again, revealing new rules, symbols, and matrices that had been invisible. They complemented the previous ones that had lowered the Dreamer's physical stats, yet their stats were given back while the formation did something else.

The Dreamer felt Reality tear apart as every Law that made their Path of Dreams was removed from that place.

That shouldn't matter. With their strength and size, they could destroy that world with ease. Or so they would've thought if their mind wasn't crippled by overwhelming agony.

The Bloody Mists of Tar'Shalon covered the Dreamer's massive body slowly, crawling like myriad insects, caressing it like a lover. The Dreamer's hivemind had been overwhelmed as soon as it had touched it. What were a few thousand wills against billions?

Everyone knew the drow war machine spit Guardians like a machine gun. Countless were born and sent to dangerous places to become strong Guardians or perish trying. The D and C ranks that were produced were sent to die in their wars at a rate that impressed most races. Even most B-ranks who had fought the Dreamer were less than a hundred standard years old because the older ones had already died on a battlefield. The drow were bred for war and died for war.

And now, the Dreamer found out where their souls went when they could be recovered.

The Dreamer got a vision of the three Autharchs who had created the mists. They were standing in a black metal room amid a very thin dark fog, looking straight ahead at their True Enemy through time and space. Two were male, one was female. They alternated in talking to him.

"We'll lie to our children," the female dark started. "We'll tell them we want to give them a new life, and thus we need their souls."

"That's not the real intent. It's all for you. To kill you."

"You became our heart demon. That is the reason we can't produce an A-rank. We can never stop fearing you, and it cripples our Path."

"We fear your machinations such that we don't believe even our collective will can defeat you unless we empower it further. So we'll use that fear as strength. We'll weaken those who strand too far from home just so our collective will can be reinforced here."

"If you one day sees this, know that your death will be doubly glorious for us, for it will be the demise of our True Enemy and the heralding of our first A-rank."

"Know that despite your best efforts, you'll be the catalyst of our ultimate ascension."

They each took one dagger from their Inventory, ugly things with grey bone handles and red blades, and pushed them into their hearts, killing themselves and adding their will to the Bloody Mists of Tar'Shalon.

When the memory faded, the mists finished covering the Dreamer's central gem. Pain consumed their body and soul. They realized in that last moment that they had been wrong.

The drow were a most formidable and obstinate foe.

Unfortunately for them, they had failed.

= - = - =

(Then we see the gem in the prison hole. I'll put it here to refresh your mind if you want)

A moon-sized blue gem floated among countless beings, all of them B-ranks at most as large as the gem, all of them rotating around a black hole.

That prison hole, known only by A-ranks, rested on a galaxy that officially didn't exist, in a universe that was theoretically so hostile the Alliance would never explore.

The gem cracked.

The swirling stars inside immediately lost their luster and started moving much slower. The Dreamer released a painful grunt, as losing their Dream Body hurt them severely, but they were still alive, and that was all that mattered—

They felt Reality twist as the defenses around the prison galaxy were shattered.

An enormous world surrounded by and releasing black mist appeared beside the gem.

"How?!" the Dreamer roared, confused.

The answer they got was the eleven hundred B-ranks who had survived the previous fight leaving the world, aiming to kill them once and for all.